Finding that balance is hard but necessary
This piece by Tim Miller on a problem facing the Democrats is very insightful and for good reason. When he was a Republican he faced the same questions a few years back when the post-Romney defeat led him and some others in the party to do that “autopsy” that suggested they needed to change their approach. The Republicans are still facing the consequences of their decision not to do that today.
Now you might say that their base is getting everything they want so why shouldn’t the Democrats do the same thing but in this volatile environment, with an ascendant right wing authoritarian movement gaining steam, it’s important for Democrats to carefully consider their strategy. The stakes have never been higher:
Joe Biden is underwater and under attack from all sides.
The current mantle-holder for the unofficial title of “Dean of the Political Press Corps,” the New York Times’ Peter Baker, wrote a Sunday A1 story about Biden’s age, revealing that the White House had pushed back a scheduled trip to the Middle East out of concerns over the president’s lack of rest.
The article features a quote from the former “Dean of the Political Punditocracy,” David Gergen, suggesting the president is at the limit of his capabilities.
“I do feel it’s inappropriate to seek that office after you’re 80 or in your 80s,” said David Gergen, a top adviser to four presidents. “I have just turned 80 and I have found over the last two or three years I think it would have been unwise for me to try to run any organization. You’re not quite as sharp as you once were.”
The conservative media has used the MSM reporting to pile on the president. Despite this widespread fisking of POTUS, the self-appointed media critics of Twitter remain unimpressed.
These guys aren’t going to let the wizened grey beards giving Biden’s age the A1 treatment get in the way of the grift. So they went after Biden and the media because their focus on this matter has not been strong or deranged enough for their liking.
One of the chief anti-Biden media critics, Glenn Greenwald, admonished me, maintaining that the media is just now breaking free from an Iraq WMD level multi-year cover-up aimed at ensuring the public is unaware that Joe Biden is old. Why George Soros has chosen this moment to tell the media to break ranks remains unclear. (A feature of right-wing/Greenwald conspiracy mongering is that an evil elite media plot can persist even when the counter-evidence to the plot is on the front page of all the major dailies.)
Over at the Washington Post, the bIaSeD MSM stuck their teeth into a different subject: unease over the Biden administration’s “struggle” to respond to the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Biden’s slow-footed response on abortion was just the latest example of a failure to meet the moment on a wave of conservative rollbacks, from gun control to environmental protections to voting rights. Some aspects of the White House reaction have felt to some Democrats like a routine response, including stakeholder calls and the creation of a task force, to an existential crisis.
“Leadership right now is coming from the streets, and we would love to be met in that effort by the White House and the Democrats more broadly,” said Rachel Carmona, the executive director of the Women’s March, on Thursday. “I think that Biden has an opportunity to step forward in a leadership role in a way that he has not.”
But amidst all this criticism there was one quote from White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield that gets at the crux of Biden’s struggles and is leading to some left-wing rhetoric that is filling me with a familiar unease.
“Joe Biden’s goal in responding to Dobbs is not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. It’s to deliver help to women who are in danger and assemble a broad-based coalition to defend a woman’s right to choose now, just as he assembled such a coalition to win during the 2020 campaign,” she said.
Bedingfield’s dismissive tone has resulted in a massive backlash among progressive activists, many of whom Took To Twitter to express their unhappiness. [And for good reason. What a shitty thing to say, especially about this issue. — d]
There are a few layers here worth digging through, because this is one case where the Twitter progs have . . . a bit of a point. And the tension between them and the White House on this score is eerily reminiscent of the GOP Autopsy experience I wrote about in WWDI.
So let’s break it down from both the perspective of Biden world and then the activist set.
From the Biden perspective:
On the one hand—Practically speaking, the point Bedingfield is making is kind of right?
Biden has demonstrated over time that he is more in step with the electorate than the very online crowd. And Bedingfield’s second sentence about what they should be focused on—delivering help to women who need it—is also correct. As Josh Barro smartly observed, “it’s time for Democrats to move to the bargaining stage of grief about Roe.” This means that demands to “preserve Roe” are, at this point, a pipe dream and should be put to rest. Democrats would benefit if instead they began to pivot to the art of the possible. Over his career this type of more realistic approach has largely served Biden well politically, so you can see why his team is arguing for it now.
On the other hand—Let’s just be honest, this is not a helpful quote. It’s gratuitously hostile to allies. It is inflaming people who have legitimate grievances. It’s dickish. And it’s reflective of a governing class that is disconnected with the base and not responding to their needs. Which is a dangerous cocktail.
From the base perspective
On the one hand—Cut the dude some slack. The Republicans spent a half century with a single-minded focus of getting judges on the court who would overturn Roe, while Democrats’ voting emphasis on judges was spotty, at best. Now that the Republican efforts have come to fruition with a 6-3 majority on the court (thanks to, let’s be real, a seat that was for all practical purposes stolen), Democratic activists want Biden to reverse all that with some made-up executive powers and a 50-50 Senate? This is NGH. And influencers who are claiming that it is doable are just inflaming their own supporters for no good purpose. I start to get night terrors when I hear people like former Sanders advisor Faiz Shakir demanding that Biden “fight.” I’ve seen where the “but he fights” ethos ends and it’s not great.
On the other hand—The complainers have a point! There’s a lot to be pissed about right now and it doesn’t feel like the Biden admin is fighting as hard as they could be. And if it doesn’t seem like the people you put in power are as pissed as you are, it’s natural to want to replace them with people who share your passion and urgency. That goes double if it seems like not only do the leaders not share your passion but that they are contemptuous of your rage-induced demands for action.
As a result, we have a combustible situation.
A governing class who is disconnected with the base and not responding to their needs.
A base whose expectations are out of whack and being stoked by the media/social media into believing they just need someone who will fight harder for them to get the pony of their dreams.
Democrats need to figure out how to resolve this tension in a way Republicans never did.
This weekend we saw one example of how to do that from Secretary Pete.
Now notice who this was shared by—progressive activist Charlotte Clymer—someone who, if you are not familiar, tends to find herself more on the rage-filled-activist side of these debates.
She was impressed because in the clip Pete demonstrated that not only was he willing to fight in the Fox lions’ den, but that he’s encouraging peaceful but aggressive action from activists who are filled with an anger that needs a productive outlet.
This is the kind of thing people are looking for. They need to feel heard. To be told that their action can make a difference. That their side is capable of popping the other side in the mouth from time to time—rhetorically speaking!
Now here’s the important distinction. That doesn’t mean these activists/voters should be babied. It doesn’t mean their demands that the president issue some extra-legal decrees to magically make things better need to be instituted. It certainly doesn’t mean they need to be lied to or that politicians should pretend to believe moronic conspiracies so that their Newsmax-addled voters can remain in a safe space where losing is winning. (Looking at you J.D. Vance.)
But they do have to, at minimum, be heard and have a sense that their politicians have their back. Biden has done this well at times, but the Bedingfield quote is clear that of late, he’s fallen short, and the tension is building.
Establishment Democrats need to find a way to balance prudence with pugnacity, or else they are going to experience a fate that I’m all too familiar with.
This sounds right to me. And I have no idea how to achieve it. But I have to admit that I can’t understand why the White House was caught so flat-footed over the Roe decision and didn’t have a strategy to work it immediately, if only for the benefit of the mid-terms. It makes you wonder if they haven’t just given up on winning in the fall — or ever. I don’t get it.
But Miller’s analysis is correct. There are no easy fixes for any of this and the Democratic base is not entirely different from the Republicans in its reflexive attacks on its own party even in the face of structural and electoral barriers. You can’t blame them but it presents a major challenge.